Firefighters or other emergency personnel are commonly called to assist in emergency situations or at accident scenes in which danger to the individuals is created by the presence of any of a number of hazardous materials. Often the individuals responding to such emergencies are specially trained members of a "hazardous materials response team".
These materials typically include toxic, caustic or flammable chemicals and can be in virtually any form, including solids, liquids or gasses. To deal with such situations and to minimize or avoid exposure to these materials, the emergency personnel will typically don protective gear which is designed to be relatively impervious to the hazardous materials and which commonly includes breathing apparatus to create a sealed self-contained environment for the user. However, the wearer is still in danger of coming into contact with the hazardous material if the suit and/or related equipment is not properly decontaminated prior to either (1) the removal of the suit or equipment or (2) the reuse of the suit. These protective suits are typically relatively bulky and are made even more so by the breathing apparatus which is usually worn under the suit. Because of the bulkiness of such a suit and for general safety reasons decontamination of a protective suit has typically involved two person teams where one individual uses a liquid cleaning solution, usually comprising plain water or a water based soap or detergent solution, to rinse and scrub the exterior of the other's suit to dilute and/or remove any residue of the hazardous material. Dilution is effective when the concentration of a hazardous material can be reduced to the point where it no longer poses any threat of harm or injury to an individual.
While being generally effective, this procedure has the disadvantages of being relatively slow and time consuming, requiring an additional person to assist each individual to be decontaminated and requiring the assistant to be in relatively close contact with the contaminated individual and the material causing the contamination. Also, because of the time required to perform decontamination in this manner, the continuous flow of water results in a relatively large quantity of water being necessary to perform decontamination. Known prior art devices to accomplish decontamination have also included freestanding cage-like structures constructed from pipes or tubular material to surround an individual and direct a high-volume spray of water or other liquid toward him from a number of different directions. However, such devices have proven less than completely satisfactory due to (1) the large quantity of water which is required for their use, (2) their general lack of convenient portability and (3) the relative difficulty and time required in setting them up for use.
In contrast, the present invention provides for a method of decontamination utilizing specific hardware and is intended to overcome each of these weaknesses.